Her gaze was like a promise, telling him that she had contacts, contacts that could make a deal, a deal that anyone in their right mind would grab at, if only to better the chances of getting out of this mess alive.
Rico didn't want to believe it.
A voice whispered softly at Bandit's left ear, saying, "Master, look."
Bandit shifted to his astral perceptions.
The bedroom now glowed softly with the radiance of life, the astral forms of Rico and Marena Farris, Bandit's own, and one other, a spirit. The spirit took the form of a large raccoon, but one that walked erect. It hovered behind Bandit's left shoulder as if to hide from the other astral forms in the room.
This particular sort of spirit was known as a watcher. It was a simple spirit capable of simple tasks. Bandit had assigned it to watch the astral terrain in the vicinity of the apartment.
"You've noticed something?" Bandit asked.
The watcher nodded vigorously, and extended a paw toward the wall at the rear of the room. Bandit looked at the wall, but saw nothing of interest. "Come swiftly, master," the watcher said. "Come and look! You said if I noticed anything strange… Well, this is very strange indeed!"
Bandit shifted to the astral plane, leaving flesh and bone behind. He wondered what the watcher had noticed. Still sitting cross-legged, he rose from the floor, turned and followed the watcher through the rear wall of the room and into the alley behind the building.
The night pulsed softly with primal energies. The auras of hundreds of people glowed dimly through the rear windows of buildings lining the alley. Other subtler gleamings of life showed here and there along the length of the alley-the auras of a rat, several weeds, birds pecking at a sprawling pile of garbage. Bandit took all of this in at a glance, and, seeing nothing of value, turned his attention elsewhere. Something else, something far more significant, demanded his attention. It tugged at his magician's sense with sudden violence-and held it.
Through the alley leading to the next block came tendrils of mana: drifting, flowing. Curling slowly forward like sinuous snakes, radiant with power. Rising, falling. Flowing up and down. Curving in and out. As the tendrils neared the back alley, they began turning outward, fanning out left and right, as if to proceed in both directions up and down the back alley, but then they curved back again as if returning to a single course.
Here was magic in the making, a long magic. Nothing else could bind the mana into such form or send it much beyond the limit of sight. Could this appearance be mere coincidence? Bandit doubted it. Long magic built up slowly, over the course of hours. It was a far more exacting magic than the manabolts and fireballs that fledgling magicians tossed off on the spur of the moment or amid the chaos of a gun battle. The leading tendrils of the spell seemed to be coming toward the building where Rico and the others had taken refuge. Even now those tendrils were crossing the back alley, slowly, sinuously snaking their way toward the wall through which Bandit had emerged.
A group of armed razorguys passing through the alleyways might have been a coincidence. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of razorguys in the plex and they all had to live somewhere. Magic and magicians were far less common. Uncommon enough to be rare.
What was the point of this sending? Bandit spent a short while considering this, assensing the spell being cast. It appeared to be a spell of detection, one designed to find a particular individual. What individual, he could not tell. Did this have something to do with Rico and the team, Ansell Surikov, or Marena Farris? Bandit wondered.
On occasions in the past, Bandit had in fact observed the sendings of other magicians, sendings that had nothing to do with him or anyone he knew or anything he was doing, but he could count those occasions on the fingers of one hand.
Always, it was best to be careful.
He returned to his physical body. Rico was crouched right in front of him, gazing at him steadily, questioningly. Bandit considered that questioning gaze, then said, "Trouble's coming."
"What trouble?" Rico asked, grimacing.
Bandit replied, "How bad do you want to know?"
Through the rear windows of the van, Shank watched the Asian slag turn in off the street and come hustling up the alley, walking fast, almost breaking into a ran. He didn't look like trouble, but his haste made Shank wonder. He was dressed like a cook: greasy white apron, shirt, pants, sneaks. If he had any weapons, they were under his hide and crammed in pretty tight. He was skinny to the point of skeletal. He might've just climbed out of a grave.
"What's this freaking piece of drek?" Thorvin said.
Shank grunted, wondering, tightening his hold on his compact Colt M22A2.
The slag kept on coming, hustled up alongside the van, then turned to the door of the apartment the team was using as a bolthole. He pounded on the door with a fist. Shank stepped out through the rear door of the van, stepped around the rear corner of the van, took one step further and put the muzzle of the Colt at the back of the slag's head.
"Be real careful," he growled, his voice low and menacing.
The slag froze, except to slowly turn his head. That head barely came up as far as the middle of Shank's chest. From what Shank could see, the slag looked surprised enough to be terrified, eyes open wide.
Abruptly, the door to the apartment swung inward and Piper stepped into view. Shank put a hand around the back of the slag's neck, about to push him inside, just into the hallway, to scope him out, but then the slag was looking at Piper and nodding and bowing the way Asians do, and Piper was bowing, too.
"Okyaku sdma ga kite imdsu!" the slag said. He spoke quickly and quietly, seeming excited. Shank wondered what the fragger was saying.
Piper's eyes went wide. "Doo yuu imi desu ka!" she said, breathlessly.
"Shookdijoo o mdtte indkereba narimasen hi!"
"Ara ma! Osore irimasu! Ddnata desu ka!"
"Nan-no shirushi ga yoroshii desu ka!"
They went on like that for a few moments more.
Shank looked up and down the alley. Nobody passing the street-end of the alley seemed in any particular hurry, no more than usual for this part of town. On the street itself, a sanitation truck rumbled by, workers in black masks, gloves and jumpsuits mounted on the truck's steps. For a night in Little Asia, for any part of the Newark sprawl, things seemed pretty quiet.
"Hai! Wakammasu! Domo arigato gozaimasu!" Piper said.
"Do itashimashite!" the slag said.
Shank lowered his weapon.
Piper bowed and the slag bowed, too. They both bowed again. The slag hurried back toward the street. Shank looked at Piper. She looked at him and said quickly, in English, "Shank, we must go. Get ready to run."
"Null sheen," Shank replied. "Run where?"
Piper stared at him wide-eyed, then suddenly shook her head and hurried back down the hall to the apartment. Shank shrugged.
Behind him, the van rumbled to life.
31
"A deal has been made, jefe," Piper said rapidly. "Daisaka has approached the oyabun himself. Kobun of Honjowara yakuza and agents of Daisaka Security are sweeping the district together. It is said they make discreet inquiries, but that is just cover. They will find us unless we leave here."
Rico grimaced. "How much time we got?"
"We must go now. Right now."
Piper didn't need to give any extra emphasis to her words. Rico could see the emphasis in her eyes. She was scared, and probably with good reason. "Somebody sold us out?"